


Now Where Did That Come From?

by watcherofworlds



Series: Whumptober 2020 [31]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Post-Episode: s03e12 Uprising, Prompt Fill, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27374179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watcherofworlds/pseuds/watcherofworlds
Summary: Prompt fill for Whumptober Day 30 "Now Where Did That Come From?"
Series: Whumptober 2020 [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956160
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Now Where Did That Come From?

The wounds that Ra’s Al Ghul had given him should have been impossible for Oliver to ignore. The thick white bandages around his upper torso, the visible marks of Tatsu’s handiwork,  _ would _ have, under different circumstances, served as constant reminders of what had been done to him, and if not those, then the white-hot flashes of agony in his chest and back, just beneath his shoulder blades, that came when he moved the wrong way and the fact that it still hurt to breathe should have. It  _ should _ have been impossible for Oliver to pretend that everything was fine, that _ he _ was fine, but somehow, he managed. He had to. He didn’t have any other choice. 

He knew that it was only a matter of time before Ra’s learned that he was alive and either came after him to finish the job of killing him himself or else sent one of his followers to do it for him, and he had to be ready. Every time he had faced a member of the League- up to including the Demon’s Head himself- he had been soundly defeated. Not only that, but in two of those instances, he’d nearly died, and he knew that this time around his death would mean the deaths, not only of Thea, but of everyone else he cared about. There was more than just his own life at stake, and he didn’t have the luxury of giving himself time to heal. He needed to train. He needed to be ready when Ra’s came for him.

The hardest part of continuing to ignore his still healing wounds was hiding how much pain he was still in from the people around him. He’d told them, repeatedly, that he was fine, and now he needed to make them believe it. Maintaining that lie was easiest when it came to Thea, because he’d kept what had really happened when he’d disappeared secret from her at Malcolm’s request, which meant that she didn’t know that he wasn’t at one hundred percent in the first place. He had a little more trouble keeping it from Dig and Roy, but he managed with them as well. Felicity, however, he suspected was onto him, mainly because she was often down in the Foundry when he was training and he knew that she saw the way he avoided moving in certain ways to keep from aggravating his injuries, but she never brought it up to him, for which he was grateful. He hated to lie to her, especially given how fraught and tense things had been between them since his return home, but he’d made his choice. Even if it killed him, he would keep ignoring his injuries, pushing aside his pain, until the danger from Ra’s and the League had passed.


End file.
